Akhenaten, a pharaoh from Egypt?s 18th Dynasty, has breasts, hips and buttocks as large and round as a woman?s and a belly as prominent as that of a pregnant woman.
Researchers marvel at the feminine characteristics of Akhenate, who fathered a half-dozen children, and suggest he may have had two medical abnormalities.
Hundreds gathered in Davidge Hall at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore Friday for the 14th annual Historical Clinicopathological Conference to discuss their findings.
This marks the first time the conference focused on an African.
Akhenaten is best known for being one of the first, if not the first monotheists in history.
Donald B. Redford, a professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Pennsylvania State University, noted that Akhenaten once said, “There is only one god, my father. I can approach him by day, by night.”
While many other pharaohs and members of his family have been preserved, no mummy of Akhenaten has been found.
Without a body, it makes it difficult for researchers to prove their theories on what diseases caused Akhenaten to have such feminine features along with an elongated head.
Dr. Irwin M. Braverman, a professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine, raised the possibility of using eight mummies of Akhenaten?s relatives, which are available for genetic analysis, to test for diseases.
“DNA from the mummy?s bone marrow could be analyzed to look for the gene defect,” Braverman said.
After ruling out numerous syndromes past researchers have suggested, Braverman believes Akhenaten might have had an inherited syndrome called Aromatase Excess Syndrome.
Aromatase Excess Syndrome is an enzyme complex that plays a critical role in converting androgens, hormones associated with male characteristics, into estrogens, hormones associated with female characteristics. The syndrome can lead to the feminization of men and advanced sexual development in girls.
Through depictions of Akhenaten?s family tree dating back six generations earlier with the founder of the 18th Dynasty, Braverman believes he found evidence of the Aromatase Excess Syndrome.
A few carvings of the daughters of Akhenaten, who appear to be between the ages of 3 and 7, depict them with breasts.
“If they really had breasts at that age, this would prove the presence of the Aromatase Excess Syndrome,” Braverman said.
He believes Akhenate had an elongated head because of craniosynostosis, in which sutures fuse at an early age and interfere with the process of skull formation.
The presence of three genes can also be tested for in the mummies to test Braverman?s theory of the craniosynostosis syndrome.
Braverman hopes the conference will lead Egyptologists to explore his theory and maybe even prove its truth. For now, though, Akhenaten?s feminine physique remains a mystery.
